page_title: Lebensraum
section_title: Implementation
hierarchical_section_title: Lebensraum / Second World War (1939–45) / Implementation
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. This description has been identified as biased or incorrect: nazi propaganda„Lodz, Millionster Umsiedler im Wartheland Ueber eine Million deutsche Umsiedler im Wartheland. Im Zusammenhang mit der vor 4 Jahren eingeleiteten völkischen Sicherung des Deutschen Lebensraumes im Osten durch die Heimholung der Aussendeutschen Volksgruppen und ihre Sesshaftmachung in den erweiterten Reichsgrenzen hat der Reichsgau Wartheland einen bedeutsamen Abschnitt seiner volkstumpolitischen Arbeit hinter sich gebracht. Gauleiter und Reichsstatthalter Greiser konnte in diesen Tagen dem Führer, sowie dem Reichsführer SS als Reichskommisar für die Festigung Deutschen Volkstums, melden, dass im Zuge der gegenwärtig vorsichgehenden Umsiedlung der Schwarzmeerdeutschen die Zahl der Deutschen im Wartheland die Millionengrenze erreicht hat. Nach Aufnahme der noch unterwegs befindlichen Schwarzmeerdeutschen wird der Deutsche Bevölkerungsanteil im Wartheland auf 1,1 Millionen steigen. Wir bringen einen Bildbericht aus Umsiedlungslagern im Warthegau. UBz. Im Rahmen einer Massenkundgebung der NSDAP in Litzmannstadt, zu der sich über 30000 Männer und Frauen eingefunden hatten, nahm Gauleiter Greiser die feierliche Einweisung des millionsten Deutschen, einem 39 jährigen Bauern aus dem Gebiet Taganrog, in sein Gaugebiet vor. Ritterkreuzträger SS-Brigadeführer Reinefahrt (mitte) stellte dem Gauleiter den Bauern vor. Fot. Hoffmann 17.3.44“ Abgebildete Personen: Greiser, Arthur: Senatspräsident von Danzig, Gauleiter Warthegau, Deutschland Reinefarth, Heinz Dr.: SS-Obergruppenführer, Ritterkreuz (RK), Waffen-SS, Polizeigeneral, MdL, Bundesrepublik Deutschland (GND 128604689)
context_page_description: The German concept of Lebensraum comprises policies and practices of settler colonialism which proliferated in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, Lebensraum became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in World War I originally, as the core element of the Septemberprogramm of territorial expansion. The most extreme form of this ideology was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany until the end of World War II.
  Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Lebensraum became an ideological principle of Nazism and provided justification for the German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. The Nazi Generalplan Ost policy was based on its tenets. It stipulated that Germany required a Lebensraum necessary for its survival and that most of the indigenous populations of Central and Eastern Europe would have to be removed permanently including Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Czech and other Slavic nations considered non-Aryan. The Nazi government aimed at repopulating these lands with Germanic colonists in the name of Lebensraum during World War II and thereafter.
context_section_description: The Polish Campaign (1 September 1939) was Adolf Hitler's first attempt to achieve Lebensraum for the Germans. The Nazi invasion of Eastern Europe consisted of atrocities committed against Polish men, women, and children. Popular German acceptance of the atrocities was achieved by way of Nazi propaganda (print, radio, cinema), a key factor behind the manufactured consent that justified German brutality towards civilians; by continually manipulating the national psychology, the Nazis convinced the German people to believe that Jews and Slavs were Untermenschen (subhumans).
  In autumn 1939, Nazi Germany's implementation of Lebensraum policy began with the Occupation of Poland (1939-1945); in October 1939, Heinrich Himmler became the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood tasked with returning all ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) to the Reich; preventing harmful foreign influences upon the German people; and to create new settlement areas (especially for returning Volksdeutsche). From mid–1940, the ethnic cleansing (forcible removal) of Poles from the Reichsgau Wartheland initially occurred across the border, to the General Government (a colonial political entity ostensibly autonomous of the Reich), then, after the invasion of the USSR, the displaced Polish populations were jailed in Polenlager (Pole-storage camps) in Silesia and sent to villages designated as ghettoes. In four years of Germanisation (1940–44), the Nazis forcibly removed some 50,000 ethnic Poles from the Polish territories annexed to the Greater German Reich, notably some 18,000–20,000 ethnic Poles from Żywiec County, in Polish Silesia, effected in Action Saybusch.
  The German population's psychological acceptance of extermination-for-Lebensraum was achieved with propaganda; the leaders of the Hitler Youth were issued pamphlets (e.g. On the German People and its Territory) meant to influence the rank-and-file Hitler Youth about the necessity of Nazi racist practices in obtaining Lebensraum for the German people. Likewise, in the Reich proper, schoolchildren were given propaganda pamphlets (e.g. You and Your People) explaining the importance of Lebensraum for the future of Germany and the German people.
caption: Germanisation of Poland: SS Obergruppenführer Arthur Greiser welcomes the millionth Eastern European Volksdeutscher to be resettled in annexed Polish territories, March 1944.
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